Cape Town-based Local transport start up, Go Metro is in the process of revolutionising the public transport system for working class commuters, both locally and abroad.
The company won the Cape Town leg of the prestigious global Get in The Ring competition, securing a lofty investment from two prominent venture capital firms.
Justin Coetzee, the startup’s founder and CEO, says that GoMetro is very similar to Google Transit but customised for emerging markets and emerging regions. “We use multiple data sources to create real time transport alerts and announcements for mobile users, the majority of whom are working class commuters.“
The data sources are digital storage systems that could be easily accessed. Over the last two years GoMetro has been digitizing public transport operations, taking them off of whiteboards and chalkboards and transforming those into searchable sets. It took about six months to do the first group, which was Metrorail in the Western Cape.
Coetzee is a civil engineer by trade and holds a Masters Degree in Transportation Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch.
A prime example of determination and drive, what started as a pilot project for Metrorail back in 2012 has quickly evolved into “the world’s first contextual transit mobile app and service”.